The Oxford Folk Festival April 11th-13th 2025 - Update

The Oxford Folk Festival April 11th-13th 2025

What’s the same?

  • We still love and are determined to share folk music and dance in all forms.
  • We are still entirely volunteer led, though glad to say that some of the people who rallied to help last year have stayed with us, so the band has grown.
  • We still get by with no external funding, and we are still determined that much of what is on offer will remain free to visitors – though any donations will be gratefully received.
  • We are still hugely grateful for the support we continue to get from the Covered Market and other Oxford institutions and businesses, especially in the provision of locations for our free performances.
  • And of course there will still be lots of dancing in the streets!

What’s new?

Basically, there’s much more happening!

This year we have put on more ticketed events in the form of concerts and social dances. These events feature respected ‘names’ like Chris Wood (at the OFS, Saturday 12th April), Sally Barker on Friday evening, 11th April, at the Quakers’ Meeting Hall, and the National Youth Folk Ensemble, on the afternoon of 11th April, at the same venue. There are also concerts being held by Moonrakers with The Oakstone Trio at the OFS on Friday 11th, and by James McCafferty at St Michael’s, Cornmarket, on the afternoon of Saturday 12th.  At St Barnabas Church, a famous Oxford landmark, there will be ceilidhs in the evening with fine music from Banter on Friday and Trinculo on Saturday.  On Sunday afternoon, April 13th, there will be a workshop and bal at St Columba’s, Alfred St, for those wishing to learn more about the traditional dances of mainland Europe. (Full info here: https://folkinoxford.co.uk/oxford-folk-festival.html).

Anyone who is in town during our festival weekend should be able to find wonderful music and dance with the many dance sides in the streets. Under cover, there will be ceilidhs, contra dancing and balfolk in the lovely St Barnabas and St Columba churches. For the part of our festival that is free to all, we have increased the number of performance areas and performers. There will also be live performances in key locations in the heart of the city throughout the weekend. The historic Covered Market remains the hub; here there will be music throughout the day from noon on Friday till 5.00pm on Sunday, including a special visit from Grenzenlos, a band from Oxford’s twin city, Bonn.  The Covered Market is the only host centre which will provide music at no cost to the visitor on all three days of the Festival. Also, on the evening of Saturday 12th April, the Covered Market, with Market Tap, will host the exciting young band Restless Oceans, who are giving a free concert. Other key locations for free music are Common Ground, the Westgate Library, the Old Fire Station, St. Columba’s Church just off the High Street, the Bodleian Library and the Norrington Room in Blackwells.

There will be music workshops for young people in Oxford’s Westgate Library and adults can choose from a variety of workshops that will be held in the Museum of Oxford.

A special pre-Festival concert will be held on the evening of Thursday,10th April, at Modern Art Oxford, the lovely gallery only a short walk from Carfax. Altogether, events for OFF’25 are being held in eleven prime central Oxford locations.

(GR, for OFF)

Oxford Folk Festival

This section of Folk in Oxford is dedicated to providing information on Oxford Folk Festival.

In the sidebar menu you will find:

  1. Links Oxford Folk Festival news and updates, facebook page and the linktree page on which you will find links to their ticketed events.

  2. Maps of the Locations and Schedules for different categories of events. Concerts and Local Performers, and Social Dances are currently posted. Maps and Schedules of Sessions and Morris Dance Performances will be posted when the information is available.

  3. Text versions of the Lists of Performers, Locations and Schedules

OFF Update, March 2025 - concerts and local venues.

Well, we are getting there!  Our trusty linktree, https://linktr.ee/oxfordfolkfest, is once again up and running, where you will find that all the formal concerts, ceilidhs, and other indoor dance events are in place and ticketed. Also our website https://oxfordfolkfest.org.uk/ is taking shape and has a live contact tab so that in future our team can be reached more reliably.

The free, less formal, local showcase areas, of which we have nine this year, are now fully populated and if you have not heard from us, I’m afraid it means that you have been unlucky this year. The full lists were completed ten days ago and will appear on the linktree very soon. I’m sorry that some of you will have been unable to make contact about getting into the programme. Messages reached me via personal email, via SMS, via Messenger, via WhatsApp, via the extraordinarily patient Dave Rogers through FIO and, once it began to work, via the actual contact tab on our gradually evolving website (https://oxfordfolkfest.org.uk/), but I know that I lost track of some enquiries, and I apologise. In future years, we hope that all contact can be made via the website.

This year there were some initial setbacks which slowed down the planning for the local performance areas. After the recent takeover of Blackwells, and because of other demands on their facilities, we have lost the use of Blackwells’ Upper Room, though we hope this is only temporary, and we still have access to the Norrington Room.  There was also much less time available in the Old Fire Station Café, though we are delighted that we have been able to place some musicians there.

Fortunately, we have been able to populate the hub of our local showcase, the Covered Market, as fully as ever. Twenty-four sets of musicians from all facets of folk will perform there, and this year Grenzenlos, a band from Oxford’s twin city Bonn, have made a special journey to join us, and they will entertain us at this historic site on the first day of the Festival. Two other important venues, Common Ground and the Westgate Public Library, continue to give generously of their time, and the Bodleian has once again offered us houseroom this April.

To ensure that there was no reduction in the number of ‘spots’ we offer in our local showcase, we sought other venues.  This year we have booked St Columba’s to help fill the gap, and, thanks to a generous offer from the Museum of Oxford, we have good extra accommodation for workshops.

The dance programme this year is more exciting and dynamic than ever and deserves a separate bulletin. Suffice it to say here, the range of indoor social dance being offered is even greater than before, and will feature in St Columba’s as well as St Barnabas. Outdoors, Morris sides and other dancers will add sound and colour to the streets, and we are delighted that, after a fallow couple of years, the Ashmolean is once again making their forecourt available for our dancers.

So as our little volunteer band hurtles along into the final straight, let’s hope that the weather is kind on the weekend of April 11th-13th! 

GR 3-02-25

  1. Oxford Folk Festival 2025
  2. Oxford Folk Festival 2025 - Update
  3. Oxford Folk Festival: a Between Festivals Update
  4. Oxford Folk Festival - One Week Later...
  5. Oxford Folk Festival Session Timetable 2025
  6. Oxford Folk Festival Social Dance (Ceilidh, Bal, etc.) Scheule
  7. The New Oxford Folk Festival - Financing a Fund-free Festival
  8. Oxford Folk Festival is Back!
  9. Oxford Folk Festival

Page 1 of 4